The glowing entrails of an exploding star, thought to have faded over time, now appear to be lighting up again, a new Hubble Space Telescope photo reveals.
NASA released the new Hubble image of the well-known star explosion, called Supernova 1987A, today (June 10). The photo shows the closest supernova explosion witnessed in almost 400 years. This has allowed astronomers to study it in unprecedented detail as the outburst evolves.
In the latest study of Supernova 1987A a team of astronomers announced that the debris from the explosion that had faded over the years is brightening. This suggests that the star explosion, which is located 165,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud (a close neighbor of our own Milky Way galaxy), is turning into a so-called supernova remnant. [See Hubble's new photo of Supernova 1987A]
"Supernova 1987A has become the youngest supernova remnant visible to us," said Robert Kirshner of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. "It's only possible to see this brightening because SN 1987A is so close and Hubble has such sharp vision."
In the new Hubble image, SN 1987A is surrounded by a ring of material that blew off the star thousands of years before it exploded. The ring extends about one light-year (about 6 trillion miles or 9.5 trillion km) across. Inside that ring, the star's guts are rushing outward in an expanding debris cloud.
Most of the light from the supernova comes from radioactive decay of elements that were created in the explosion. This light fades over time, but the brightening of SN 1987A's debris suggests that a new power source is lighting it.
The debris of 1987A is beginning to impact the surrounding ring, which is creating powerful shock waves that produce X-rays that can be observed by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. Those X-rays are illuminating the supernova debris and the heated shock waves are making it glow. This same process powers well-known supernova remnants in our own galaxy, like Cassiopeia A.
